ChadVanHalen
New member
Ever since I was a kid watching KISS and System of a Down videos I've had a sort of guilty pleasure guitar... And it's the Iceman, but I never pulled the trigger on one mainly due to me needing to build up my Floyd collection and I wanted something that can take the place of the Les Paul, with the 4 knob wiring and upper horn pickup switch, and this summer Ibanez give in to my wants and introduced the IC520... Only problem I saw was that it was made in China...
But fear not because Ibanez and whoever it is that is running their China factory completely blew my expectations. After seeing the country of origin I just wanted it to stay in tune alright, have a straight neck with decent enough frets and have no neck dive and what I got blew every other "budget" Indo/China guitar out of the water. The neck had no humps on it (something my Japanese Burny Les Paul had an issue with which is why I sold it for this) and not a single fret had the accursed string get stuck under a fret problem I've had with guitars even from Japan and Korea. With my nylon and leather straps there's no neck dive. Not like "Oh it's a low end import, it's going to sink a little so I'll let it pass," I mean there's no neck dive, something my Korean Mockingbird has a problem with. The tuners are no name "Grovers" and they're alright, probably will replace them but they can hold tune decently enough. That's all I needed in the guitar honestly but to add to the plus side it came stock with USA DiMarzios (Tone Zone and Air Norton I believe), set neck and an unbelievably cool little bridge they call the Tight Tune. The pieces lock into the body of the guitar like the Edges do but there's also little finger knobs you can tighten to keep the pieces on the saddles while changing strings (something my friend with a Les Paul wanted to punch me for having on some "Chinese piece of crap" and not his American Gibson) and extremely conveniently placed intonation screws and intonation locking screws
As for negatives, as I said the tuners aren't the highest quality and seem to have slight trouble holding tune, but we'll see. Apart from that the pots and pickup selector feels a tad stiff, don't know if that's from low quality parts or just need to be worked in/lubricated somehow. But the biggest problem of the guitar is actually a real minor cosmetic issue and that's with the inlays, whoever put them in my board had some issues because the edges look real sloppy. Granted, I didn't notice it until I was looking real closely at the inlays, but it's there. I guess you can say at least the inlays are real and not stickers but that's the biggest con of this guitar
Usually I do just standard NGD posts but when I bought this there were zero posts about this and that MIC made me really nervous to pull the trigger without Guitar Center's return policy so let this be a guide for anyone looking at these and iffy on pulling the trigger. Had you told me this was Korean I would believe you, this guitar is really top notch and well worth the $700 price tag... And once the new Paul Stanleys come out in a few months I can see these dropping in price and be a great steal.
Also just to add to the NGD, "Santa" bought himself a little B-rig. Orange Micro Terror and light 2x12 = less stress of moving the big rig around to every rehearsal and jam session, and with a bit of a boost from an 808 or SD-1 on it it's a tiny but loud screamer
But fear not because Ibanez and whoever it is that is running their China factory completely blew my expectations. After seeing the country of origin I just wanted it to stay in tune alright, have a straight neck with decent enough frets and have no neck dive and what I got blew every other "budget" Indo/China guitar out of the water. The neck had no humps on it (something my Japanese Burny Les Paul had an issue with which is why I sold it for this) and not a single fret had the accursed string get stuck under a fret problem I've had with guitars even from Japan and Korea. With my nylon and leather straps there's no neck dive. Not like "Oh it's a low end import, it's going to sink a little so I'll let it pass," I mean there's no neck dive, something my Korean Mockingbird has a problem with. The tuners are no name "Grovers" and they're alright, probably will replace them but they can hold tune decently enough. That's all I needed in the guitar honestly but to add to the plus side it came stock with USA DiMarzios (Tone Zone and Air Norton I believe), set neck and an unbelievably cool little bridge they call the Tight Tune. The pieces lock into the body of the guitar like the Edges do but there's also little finger knobs you can tighten to keep the pieces on the saddles while changing strings (something my friend with a Les Paul wanted to punch me for having on some "Chinese piece of crap" and not his American Gibson) and extremely conveniently placed intonation screws and intonation locking screws
As for negatives, as I said the tuners aren't the highest quality and seem to have slight trouble holding tune, but we'll see. Apart from that the pots and pickup selector feels a tad stiff, don't know if that's from low quality parts or just need to be worked in/lubricated somehow. But the biggest problem of the guitar is actually a real minor cosmetic issue and that's with the inlays, whoever put them in my board had some issues because the edges look real sloppy. Granted, I didn't notice it until I was looking real closely at the inlays, but it's there. I guess you can say at least the inlays are real and not stickers but that's the biggest con of this guitar
Usually I do just standard NGD posts but when I bought this there were zero posts about this and that MIC made me really nervous to pull the trigger without Guitar Center's return policy so let this be a guide for anyone looking at these and iffy on pulling the trigger. Had you told me this was Korean I would believe you, this guitar is really top notch and well worth the $700 price tag... And once the new Paul Stanleys come out in a few months I can see these dropping in price and be a great steal.
Also just to add to the NGD, "Santa" bought himself a little B-rig. Orange Micro Terror and light 2x12 = less stress of moving the big rig around to every rehearsal and jam session, and with a bit of a boost from an 808 or SD-1 on it it's a tiny but loud screamer